In this session, we'll hear Laurie LaFontan Stokes read a poem about AIDS in Spanish and in his own English translation. Later in the course, I'll read a poem by Paul Manet. But you'll find that Larry is a much more dynamic reader of poetry than I am. I'm including these two poems as a gesture towards recognizing the enormous amount of art in all media that has been created in response to the AIDS epidemic. Some of it by artists who are HIV positive, some of whom died of AIDS. I'll mention a few instances before we move on to Larry's reading of one poem. For example, the largest public art project in history is the AIDS quilt, produced by thousands of people under the aus, auspices of the names project. Each panel is devoted to a person who died of AIDS, and it was created by his or her family or friends. I have seen portions of the AIDS quilt on several occasions, and it is extremely moving. The content, the infinite array of styles, gives a sense of the range of the epidemic and its human consequences. The playwright Tony Kushner wrote an amazing two part play about AIDS, Angels in America. It is complex and profound and it's been made into a HBO film. If you have an opportunity to see it, do so. But be prepared for a powerful, but also difficult work of art. There have been quite a few films about AIDS, but the most famous is probably Philadelphia. It's a fine film and if you haven't seen it, grab the next opportunity to view it. Also, on the web, you can find several lists of films about AIDS, many of them excellent. In an earlier session with Larry, he told us about a website called Visual AIDS, that features artistic work about AIDS by HIV positive artists. Take a look at visualaids.org. Search the web for artist and art related to AIDS. You'll find many paths to explore. Now for the poem, Larry reads it first in Spanish. Even if you don't speak Spanish as I don't. You may well find it interesting to hear the sound of the poem in its original language. Larry's English translation follows. Listen to it a couple of times. >> I am Larry La Fountain-Stokes, and today I am going to read a poem by the gay Puerto Rican writer Manual Ramos Otero. Who was born in 1948 in Puerto Rico and died in 1990 back in Puerto Rico from AIDS related complications after spending most of his adult life in the United States. The poem is in Spanish. I'm going to read it in Spanish first and then in English. The title is [FOREIGN], Blood Nobility. And it is part of the book [FOREIGN], Invitation to the Dust, or Invitation to Sperm which was published in 1991 in Puerto Rico. [FOREIGN]. Blood nobility by the Puerto Rican poet Manuel Ramos Otero, 1991 published a year after his death from complications of AIDS. Thank you Lord for having sent us AIDS, all the drug addicts and faggots of New York, San Francisco, Puerto Rico, and Haiti will be eternally grateful for your a plam as emperor of everything and of nothing. And if I'm not mistaken Roman, Catholic and Apostolic. Heterosexuals from the center of African, I think are ungrateful in not recognizing that AIDS has allowed to enter modernity without prejudices, even if they already know that the lack of rain and food is your just game as purifier and architect of souls. Lord, forgive bisexuals for their innate confusion, for believing that pleasure lies in the variety of bodies. And, above all, forgive the moral majority untouchable and serene that still ignores the sweet cut of your sword of flesh. Lord, if someone, if to someone you should be grateful for the reestablishment of your fame, it is to the gospel of tents, to the army of circuses and invisible cages. That like a river of flowing waters of brothers and sisters inseminaters of faith, reject your perfect calendar and [FOREIGN] image beauty and reconstitute your word in languages unknown, even by philologists. Lord, forgive my arrogance against televised evangelists and the obsessive decorum with which they ask for so much money in your name, because they know that all of the money of the Incas and all of the dollars are yours. Forgive the two or three poets of the written word. And a two or three poets of the cinema that know that neither silk nor velvet nor brocade could be your favorite fabrics, and brought back your divine filth of gutters equal in, equalling Porcelain and trash in black and white and Technicolor. Lord I am aware that many AIDS patients who tenderly believe that man and I think woman also were made in your image. Believe that you have undergone all the series of infectious diseases that strike us AIDS patients, and have we ever been patient, those sweats or nocturnal chills as if night existed for you. That eternal tiredness lord, that does not let me walk much less not write my poetry. That marginalization without end. That collective disgust toward Kaposi's sarcoma and tuberculosis, towards thinness and epidermal fungus. But the attachment to the life of this world has made AIDS patients ignorant of the contract. The magical stories of lepers and of Lazarus must have been written in China. And as the saying goes, I don't even believe in a Chinese doctor, although I do believe in the thousand and one nights. Lord, I am going to take the little bit of liberty that I have colonized as I am, and define our identity. Let them call us ascetics once and for all! They have already committed the worst atrocities against us and many more that they say they committed against you. With privileged means for epoch of course. Lord, I only have to deal with the issue of your identity. I am not going to go into personal issues, nor invade your intimacy which is inviolable. But what led you to give the franchise for the second destruction of Sodom to the Americans? Freud would tell you, was it perhaps your absolutely loneliness, your absolute disdain, your feeling of blame for so many genocides, your sexual frustration with the apostles, or the naive illusion of believing that the right to love, to secret flesh, to life and death still belong to you with an affidavit of your birth. This poem, written in Spanish, by Manuel Ramos [FOREIGN], published in 1991, translated by myself, Larry Lafontaine Stokes.
